One of the core infrastructural issues we are facing is an inability of our arterial roads and highways to provide rapid cross-town access. Globally, city and highway planners recognize and create different infrastructure for highways and city roads. See Dr. Joglekar’s posts here for a succinct description of this problem plaguing most Indian cities. A simple schematic (full size image here)and an inventory of city highways reveals the problem.

Thru Highways:

1. NH7 (in blue)
2. NH4 (in red)

Terminal Highways:

Happened to notice a tender notification on BMTC website for the construction of TTMC at Hebbal.

The Tender document states the site overview to be "..The project site is located in the northern part of the city at Hebbal, measuring about 7.95 acres. The site is situated at the intersection of the National Highway 7 (Bellary Road) and the Outer Ring Road. The intersection along with the Hebbal flyover is an important landmark in the city and is strategically located in terms of connectivity to the new airport at Devanahalli and to different parts of the city.

As per the Bangalore Master Plan 2015, the  site land use is classified as Traffic & Transport  (T&T) category. Currently out of 7.95 acres, about 4.27 acres of the bus depot is operated by BMTC. Depot comprises of maintenance workshop, washing area, fuelling station, stores and administration building. At present, the depot is a base for about 210 buses which includes about 90 Volvo buses..."

People prefer own transport mainly because they can travel directly by the shortest route non-stop to the school/college/workspot and back.To use public transport, one has to walk in the hot sun to the nearest bus stop, wait for the correct bus, somehow manage to get in, get down and walk again.some people have to take more than one bus.Because of the crazy one way maze, one has to walk to a different bus stop for the return journey.

It is certainly possible to provide a facility almost like own transport.Presently, sharing transport is limited to it/bpo computer savvy sector.But there are lots of other people who are not computer savvy, who do not have the time to log on to a computer ,etc (the bottom of the pyramid, to quote management guru c k prahlad) who would gladly join to form a transport pool.There may be so many people in an apartment complex traveling daily to the same place and back at the same time.They would probably be surprised to see familiar faces in the group and think "why didn't WE think of this ?"